Lifestyle
Biden helped bring science out of the lab and into the community − emphasizing research focused on solutions
Arthur Daemmrich, Arizona State University
President Joe Biden was inaugurated in January 2021 amid a devastating pandemic, with over 24 million COVID-19 cases and more than 400,000 deaths in the U.S. recorded at that point.
Operation Warp Speed, initiated by the Trump administration in May 2020, meant an effective vaccine was becoming available. Biden quickly announced a plan to immunize 100 million Americans over the next three months. By the end of April 2021, 145 million Americans – nearly half the population – had received one vaccine dose, and 103 million were considered fully vaccinated. Science and technology policymakers celebrated this coordination across science, industry and government to address a real-world crisis as a 21st-century Manhattan Project.
From my perspective as a scholar of science and technology policy, Biden’s legacy includes structural, institutional and practical changes to how science is conducted. Building on approaches developed over the course of many years, the administration elevated the status of science in the government and fostered community participation in research.
Raising science’s profile in government
The U.S. has no single ministry of science and technology. Instead, agencies and offices across the executive branch carry out scientific research at several national labs and fund research by other institutions. By elevating the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to a Cabinet-level organization for the first time in its history, Biden gave the agency greater influence in federal decision-making and coordination.
Formally established in 1976, the agency provides the president and senior staff with scientific and technical advice, bringing science to bear on executive policies. Biden’s inclusion of the agency’s director in his Cabinet was a strong signal about the elevated role science and technology would play in the administration’s solutions to major societal challenges.
Under Biden, the Office of Science and Technology Policy established guidelines that agencies across the government would follow as they implemented major legislation. This included developing technologies that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to address climate change, rebuilding America’s chip industry, and managing the rollout of AI technologies.
Instead of treating the ethical and societal dimensions of scientific and technological change as separate from research and development, the agency advocated for a more integrated approach. This was reflected in the appointment of social scientist Alondra Nelson as the agency’s first deputy director for science and society, and science policy expert Kei Koizumi as principal deputy director for policy. Ethical and societal considerations were added as evaluation criteria for grants. And initiatives such as the AI bill of rights and frameworks for research integrity and open science further encouraged all federal agencies to consider the social effects of their research.
The Office of Science and Technology Policy also introduced new ways for agencies to consult with communities, including Native Nations, rural Americans and people of color, in order to avoid known biases in science and technology research. For example, the agency issued government-wide guidance to recognize and include Indigenous knowledge in federal programs. Agencies such as the Department of Energy have incorporated public perspectives while rolling out atmospheric carbon dioxide removal technologies and building new hydrogen hubs.
Use-inspired research
A long-standing criticism of U.S. science funding is that it often fails to answer questions of societal importance. Members of Congress and policy analysts have argued that funded projects instead overly emphasize basic research in areas that advance the careers of researchers.
In response, the Biden administration established the technology, innovation and partnerships directorate at the National Science Foundation in March 2022.
The directorate uses social science approaches to help focus scientific research and technology on their potential uses and effects on society. For example, engineers developing future energy technologies could start by consulting with the community about local needs and opportunities, rather than pitching their preferred solution after years of laboratory work. Genetic researchers could share both knowledge and financial benefits with the communities that provided the researchers with data.
Fundamentally, “use-inspired” research aims to reconnect scientists and engineers with the people and communities their work ultimately affects, going beyond publication in a journal accessible only to academics.
The technology, innovation and partnerships directorate established initiatives to support regional projects and multidisciplinary partnerships bringing together researchers, entrepreneurs and community organizations. These programs, such as the regional innovation engines and convergence accelerator, seek to balance the traditional process of grant proposals written and evaluated by academics with broader societal demand for affordable health and environmental solutions. This work is particularly key to parts of the country that have not yet seen visible gains from decades of federally sponsored research, such as regions encompassing western North Carolina, northern South Carolina, eastern Tennessee and southwest Virginia.
Community-based scientific research
The Biden administration also worked to involve communities in science not just as research consultants but also as active participants.
Scientific research and technology-based innovation are often considered the exclusive domain of experts from elite universities or national labs. Yet, many communities are eager to conduct research, and they have insights to contribute. There is a decades-long history of citizen science initiatives, such as birdwatchers contributing data to national environmental surveys and community groups collecting industrial emissions data that officials can use to make regulations more cost effective.
Going further, the Biden administration carried out experiments to create research projects in a way that involved community members, local colleges and federal agencies as more equal partners.
For example, the Justice40 initiative asked people from across the country, including rural and small-town Americans, to identify local environmental justice issues and potential solutions.
The National Institutes of Health’s ComPASS program funded community organizations to test and scale successful health interventions, such as identifying pregnant women with complex medical needs and connecting them to specialized care.
And the National Science Foundation’s Civic Innovation Challenge required academic researchers to work with local organizations to address local concerns, improving the community’s technical skills and knowledge.
Frontiers of science and technology policy
Researchers often cite the 1945 report Science: The Endless Frontier, written by former Office of Scientific Research and Development head Vannevar Bush, to describe the core rationales for using American taxpayer money to fund basic science. Under this model, funding science would lead to three key outcomes: a secure national defense, improved health, and economic prosperity. The report, however, says little about how to go from basic science to desired societal outcomes. It also makes no mention of scientists sharing responsibility for the direction and impact of their work.
The 80th anniversary of Bush’s report in 2025 offers an opportunity to move science out into society. At present, major government initiatives are following a technology push model that focuses efforts on only one or a few products and involves little consideration of consumer and market demand. Research has repeatedly demonstrated that consumer or societal pull, which attracts development of products that enhance quality of life, is key to successful uptake of new technologies and their longevity.
Future administrations can further advance science and address major societal challenges by considering how ready society is to take up new technologies and increasing collaboration between government and civil society.
Arthur Daemmrich, Professor of Practice in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society, Arizona State University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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cruise
Top Trends for Swoon-Worthy Cruise Vacations
Swoon-Worthy Cruise Vacations: From immersive dining to wellness at sea and elevated entertainment, cruise vacations are becoming some of the most experience-rich trips travelers can take. To take advantage of the evolution of the industry when planning your next vacation at sea, consider these emerging trends.
Top Trends for Swoon-Worthy Cruise Vacations
(Feature Impact) From immersive dining to wellness at sea and elevated entertainment, cruise vacations are becoming some of the most experience-rich trips travelers can take.
“Our industry has long been known for innovation, but what’s most compelling now is how that scale is being leveraged to invest in more immersive entertainment, wellness experiences and purpose-driven exploration at destinations around the world,” said Chiara Giorgi, global event and brand director for Seatrade Cruise Global, the largest and longest-running annual event of its kind serving every sector of the international cruise industry, including cruise lines, suppliers, travel agents and partners.
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To take advantage of the evolution of the industry when planning your next vacation at sea, consider these emerging trends identified at the conference.
The Rise of Floating Wellness Retreats
Once upon a time, wellness meant spas, saunas and massages. Wellness in 2026 is much more luxurious and is deeply embedded into the cruise experience. For example, Cunard’s “Wellness at Sea” voyages integrate expert-led fitness, nutrition, mindfulness and recovery programming, turning wellness into a structured, goal-driven experience and elevating wellness as a core pillar of the onboard experience. Additional cruise lines, including Virgin Voyages and Celebrity Cruises, are also helping raise the bar on floating wellness. Think thermal suites, meditation spaces and sleep-focused programming, along with wellness excursions and destination-inspired spa rituals that extend the experience to the shore.
Dining Becomes the Experience
Dining has long been a key component of many cruises, but now, food and drink are evolving from a cruise staple to a central form of entertainment and cultural discovery. Cruise lines are investing in immersive dining environments, destination-inspired menus and beverage programs that connect guests more directly with the places they visit.
From location-specific cuisine to interactive dining concepts and destination-driven cocktail programs, F&B@Sea, Seatrade Cruise Global’s companion show, found culinary experiences are increasingly designed to be memorable punctuation points of the journey itself. Across the industry, cruise lines are investing heavily in culinary programs that blur the line between dining and entertainment. Tapping into the supper club trend, Royal Caribbean introduced the Empire Supper Club to turn dinner into a night out at sea, combining multi-course menus, craft cocktails and live music for a full evening experience.
Exploring Expeditions with Purpose
Expedition travel is having more than a moment. It continues to grow as travelers seek deeper engagement with the natural world. Leading the shift toward purpose-driven explorations, operators such as National Geographic-Lindblad Expeditions, long recognized for pioneering modern expedition travel, helped define this category through a model rooted in education, conservation and hands-on exploration. Built on the belief that exploring the world can inspire people to care more deeply for it, expert-led expeditions, such as kayaking among glaciers, participating in citizen science programs studying seabirds and learning directly from naturalists and scientists, place a strong emphasis on stewardship and real-world learning.
Ships as Cultural Hubs
Entertainment at sea is expanding beyond traditional stage shows to include immersive productions, music residencies and partnerships with leading performing arts brands. For example, Holland America Line joined forces with The Verdon Fosse Legacy to debut “Fosse and Verdon, The Duet That Changed Broadway,” a live musical and multimedia tribute celebrating the revolutionary work of Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon by bringing it to an international stage at sea for the first time.
As cruises continue to expand their global footprint, the Seatrade Cruise Global event positions itself not simply as a trade gathering, but as the central forum where trends are explored and defined. To learn more, visit seatradecruiseevents.com.
Photos courtesy of Shutterstock
SOURCE:
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Festivals
Presqu’ile Winery Partners With LAND to Bring Contemporary Art to Santa Maria Valley
Presqu’ile Winery and LAND are partnering to bring free, site-responsive contemporary art to the Santa Maria Valley estate in Santa Barbara Wine Country.
Santa Barbara Wine Country is about to get a fresh reason to linger a little longer. Presqu’ile Winery has announced a new collaboration with Los Angeles Nomadic Division (LAND), the nationally recognized nonprofit known for taking contemporary art out of traditional museums and galleries and placing it directly into the environments that shape it. The result: curated, site-responsive works—some created specifically for the property—installed across Presqu’ile’s Santa Maria Valley estate.
A winery becomes an open-air gallery—at no cost
Under the partnership, Presqu’ile will serve as a host site for LAND programming, opening its estate to the public for free. Visitors can expect contemporary art integrated into the vineyard setting, with select installations shaped by the landscape itself. The goal is simple and ambitious at the same time: expand no-cost access to contemporary art along California’s Central Coast while creating a cultural experience that feels inseparable from the place it inhabits.
LAND’s approach is rooted in the belief that art should be experienced where people actually live, work, and gather. Rather than building exhibitions around white walls and controlled lighting, LAND supports projects driven by place—work that engages the environment, the community, and the lived experience of the artists creating it.
“Nourishing reciprocity” between art, landscape, and community
Laura Hyatt, Director of LAND, emphasized how the Central Coast setting opens new creative possibilities for artists.
Hyatt noted that collaborating with Presqu’ile gives artists the opportunity to engage with the region’s natural beauty and unique ecology—placing artworks in what she described as “nourishing reciprocity” with the landscape and the visitors moving through it. She also highlighted the long-term potential of the partnership, which allows for deeper exploration over time, expands LAND’s geographic reach, and strengthens connections between Southern and Central California.
For Hyatt, the collaboration is personal as well: her family has roots in the area going back five generations, adding another layer of community connection to the work LAND hopes to cultivate.
A shared mindset: tradition, experimentation, and a sense of place
Presqu’ile framed the partnership as a natural extension of what the winery already does—balancing tradition with experimentation. In the same way winemaking can honor time-tested methods while still pushing toward new expressions, contemporary art can offer new ways of seeing familiar processes and landscapes.
Matt Murphy, co-founder of Presqu’ile Winery, said the family’s appreciation for the visual arts made the collaboration an easy “yes.” He pointed to the opportunity to create “fun, compelling and unexpected” ways for the community to engage with both the installations and the estate itself—and to experience Presqu’ile through each artist’s creative lens.
What happens next
In the near term, LAND will install artworks developed through its programming on the Presqu’ile property, with public access remaining free. The collaboration is designed with community benefit at its center, positioning the estate as a cultural and agricultural destination—not just a tasting room.
Looking ahead, Presqu’ile has submitted plans for approval to develop expanded spaces intended to support free public art, cultural programming, and community gathering. If approved, those improvements would signal a long-term commitment to integrating arts and culture into the estate experience and welcoming future partners whose work aligns with Presqu’ile’s values of openness, creativity, and place-based expression.
Additional details—including participating artists and installation timelines—will be announced as the collaboration progresses.
About the partners
Presqu’ile Winery
Presqu’ile (pronounced press-keel) is a family-owned estate winery in Santa Maria Valley on California’s Central Coast. Founded in 2007, the winery produces cool-climate wines from its sustainably farmed estate vineyard and from a select group of growers across Santa Barbara County. The name—French Creole for “almost an island”—reflects the Murphy family’s Gulf Coast heritage and the winery’s deep emphasis on place.
Los Angeles Nomadic Division (LAND)
Founded in 2009, LAND is a nonprofit arts organization dedicated to connecting people and places through site-responsive public art and programs. Over 15 years, LAND has presented more than 500 artists across 300+ programs and exhibitions, ranging from large-scale sculptural commissions to billboards, roadside screenings, workshops, and city-wide video presentations—reaching millions of people.
Why it matters
This collaboration isn’t just about adding art to a winery—it’s about rethinking where art belongs, who gets to access it, and how landscape can become part of the creative process. For the Central Coast, Presqu’ile and LAND are setting the stage for a new kind of cultural destination: one where a walk through the vines can also be a walk through contemporary ideas, made visible in the open air.
Source: Presqu’ile Winery
Organization: Los Angeles Nomadic Division (LAND)
- Presqu’ile media contact: diana@solterrastrategies.com
- LAND media contact: kyle@hellothirdeye.com
Our Lifestyle section on STM Daily News is a hub of inspiration and practical information, offering a range of articles that touch on various aspects of daily life. From tips on family finances to guides for maintaining health and wellness, we strive to empower our readers with knowledge and resources to enhance their lifestyles. Whether you’re seeking outdoor activity ideas, fashion trends, or travel recommendations, our lifestyle section has got you covered. Visit us today at https://stmdailynews.com/category/lifestyle/ and embark on a journey of discovery and self-improvement.
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Lifestyle
Women are at a higher risk of dying from heart disease − in part because doctors don’t take major sex and gender differences into account
Heart disease impacts women differently than men due to genetic and gender biases in healthcare. Awareness and improved treatment approaches are essential for better outcomes.
Last Updated on April 20, 2026 by Daily News Staff
Amy Huebschmann, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus and Judith Regensteiner, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus
A simple difference in the genetic code – two X chromosomes versus one X chromosome and one Y chromosome – can lead to major differences in heart disease. It turns out that these genetic differences influence more than just sex organs and sex assigned at birth – they fundamentally alter the way cardiovascular disease develops and presents.
While sex influences the mechanisms behind how cardiovascular disease develops, gender plays a role in how healthcare providers recognize and manage it. Sex refers to biological characteristics such as genetics, hormones, anatomy and physiology, while gender refers to social, psychological, and cultural constructs. Women are more likely to die after a first heart attack or stroke than men. Women are also more likely to have additional or different heart attack symptoms that go beyond chest pain, such as nausea, jaw pain, dizziness and fatigue. It is often difficult to fully disentangle the influences of sex on cardiovascular disease outcomes versus the influences of gender.
While women who haven’t entered menopause have a lower risk of cardiovascular disease than men, their cardiovascular risk accelerates dramatically after menopause. In addition, if a woman has Type 2 diabetes, her risk of heart attack accelerates to be equivalent to that of men, even if the woman with diabetes has not yet gone through menopause. Further data is needed to better understand differences in cardiovascular disease risk among nonbinary and transgender patients.
Despite these differences, one key thing is the same: Heart attack, stroke and other forms of cardiovascular disease are the leading cause of death for all people, regardless of sex or gender.
We are researchers who study women’s health and the way cardiovascular disease develops and presents differently in women and men. Our work has identified a crucial need to update medical guidelines with more sex-specific approaches to diagnosis and treatment in order to improve health outcomes for all.
Gender differences in heart disease
The reasons behind sex and gender differences in cardiovascular disease are not completely known. Nor are the distinct biological effects of sex, such as hormonal and genetic factors, versus gender, such as social, cultural and psychological factors, clearly differentiated.
What researchers do know is that the accumulated evidence of what good heart care should look like for women compared with men has as many holes in it as Swiss cheese. Medical evidence for treating cardiovascular disease often comes from trials that excluded women, since women for the most part weren’t included in scientific research until the NIH Revitalization Act of 1993. For example, current guidelines to treat cardiovascular risk factors such as high blood pressure are based primarily on data from men. This is despite evidence that differences in the way that cardiovascular disease develops leads women to experience cardiovascular disease differently.
In addition to sex differences, implicit gender biases among providers and gendered social norms among patients lead clinicians to underestimate the risk of cardiac events in women compared with men. These biases play a role in why women are more likely than men to die from cardiac events. For example, for patients with symptoms that are borderline for cardiovascular disease, clinicians tend to be more aggressive in ordering artery imaging for men than for women. One study linked this tendency to order less aggressive tests for women partly to a gender bias that men are more open than women to taking risks.
In a study of about 3,000 patients with a recent heart attack, women were less likely than men to think that their heart attack symptoms were due to a heart condition. Additionally, most women do not know that cardiovascular disease is the No. 1 cause of death among women. Overall, women’s misperceptions of their own risk may hold them back from getting a doctor to check out possible symptoms of a heart attack or stroke.
These issues are further exacerbated for women of color. Lack of access to health care and additional challenges drive health disparities among underrepresented racial and ethnic minority populations.
Sex difference in heart disease
Cardiovascular disease physically looks different for women and men, specifically in the plaque buildup on artery walls that contributes to illness.
Women have fewer cholesterol crystals and fewer calcium deposits in their artery plaque than men do. Physiological differences in the smallest blood vessels feeding the heart also play a role in cardiovascular outcomes.
Women are more likely than men to have cardiovascular disease that presents as multiple narrowed arteries that are not fully “clogged,” resulting in chest pain because blood flow can’t ratchet up enough to meet higher oxygen demands with exercise, much like a low-flow showerhead. When chest pain presents in this way, doctors call this condition ischemia and no obstructive coronary arteries. In comparison, men are more likely to have a “clogged” artery in a concentrated area that can be opened up with a stent or with cardiac bypass surgery. Options for multiple narrowed arteries have lagged behind treatment options for typical “clogged” arteries, which puts women at a disadvantage.
In addition, in the early stages of a heart attack, the levels of blood markers that indicate damage to the heart are lower in women than in men. This can lead to more missed diagnoses of coronary artery disease in women compared with men.
The reasons for these differences are not fully clear. Some potential factors include differences in artery plaque composition that make men’s plaque more likely to rupture or burst and women’s plaque more likely to erode. Women also have lower heart mass and smaller arteries than men even after taking body size into consideration.
Reducing sex disparities
Too often, women with symptoms of cardiovascular disease are sent away from doctor’s offices because of gender biases that “women don’t get heart disease.”
Considering how symptoms of cardiovascular disease vary by sex and gender could help doctors better care for all patients.
One way that the rubber is meeting the road is with regard to better approaches to diagnosing heart attacks for women and men. Specifically, when diagnosing heart attacks, using sex-specific cutoffs for blood tests that measure heart damage – called high-sensitivity troponin tests – can improve their accuracy, decreasing missed diagnoses, or false negatives, in women while also decreasing overdiagnoses, or false positives, in men.
Our research laboratory’s leaders, collaborators and other internationally recognized research colleagues – some of whom partner with our Ludeman Family Center for Women’s Health Research on the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus – will continue this important work to close this gap between the sexes in health care. Research in this field is critical to shine a light on ways clinicians can better address sex-specific symptoms and to bring forward more tailored treatments.
The Biden administration’s recent executive order to advance women’s health research is paving the way for research to go beyond just understanding what causes sex differences in cardiovascular disease. Developing and testing right-sized approaches to care for each patient can help achieve better health for all.
Amy Huebschmann, Professor of Medicine, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus and Judith Regensteiner, Professor of Medicine, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Our Lifestyle section on STM Daily News is a hub of inspiration and practical information, offering a range of articles that touch on various aspects of daily life. From tips on family finances to guides for maintaining health and wellness, we strive to empower our readers with knowledge and resources to enhance their lifestyles. Whether you’re seeking outdoor activity ideas, fashion trends, or travel recommendations, our lifestyle section has got you covered. Visit us today at https://stmdailynews.com/category/lifestyle/ and embark on a journey of discovery and self-improvement.
